Andrea Syrtash is a relationship expert, author, and entrepreneur building pregnantish, the first-to-market platform for people facing fertility and infertility issues.Andrea Syrtash

Andrea Syrtash is 'pregnantish,' meaning well, she’s kind of pregnant, but not entirely. Rather than bemoaning the fact, this self-proclaimed ‘ovary achiever’ is building a company to help other people in her situation.

Her new content platform and community pregnantish is dedicated to educating, supporting, and connecting people navigating fertility and infertility issues. Not only is the venture addressing an audience that’s been largely underserved, it’s the first business of its kind in an industry that’s expected to be worth more than $21 billion by 2020. One cycle of in vitro fertilization alone costs $12,000 to $15,000.

At age 14, Syrtash was in the hospital with endometriosis, and the doctor said it was related to her fertility. But at the time, having a child was the last thing on her mind. Fast forward to today, and getting and staying pregnant has been a tremendous journey for her spiritually, physically, financially and relationship-wise.

Fortunately, she’s not alone. Still in beta, pregnantish has received noteworthy media recognition, and is nurturing a burgeoning community.

Here are some tips Syrtash has for anyone aiming to build a first-to-market business:

If you already have a platform, use it to evolve into your new vision.

While starting a company is new territory for Syrtash, cultivating a personal brand is not. Over the years, she’s built her career as a relationship expert and self-help book author who's hosted shows for networks such as OWN and FOX.

Until pregnantish (which was originally a book concept) was born, she thought she'd covered all the chapters of modern-day relationships. But after seven years of seeing eight different doctors and receiving 18 treatments for infertility, she realized fertility is a growing issue that many women and couples are facing with little support.

She added, “what’s funny is that when I started pregnantish, friends and family would say say, ‘oh, so are you moving away from the relationship thing? And I’d say, ‘no, this is the relationship thing.’”

Do a friends and family convertible note as a first round of investment.

Speaking of friends and family, to get pregnantish off the ground Syrtash did a family and friends fundraising round, which was initiated in August 2016. From this, she raised enough money to build a prototype, hire a lawyer, incorporate, trademark and launch the platform so it "looked professional."

As the first content site about fertility and infertility for singles, couples and the LGBT community, pregnantish delivers high-quality content through articles, videos and live events in key markets. Syrtash says there will be podcasts in the future.

Pamper your audience.

Syrtash’s near and long-term goal is to continue to put her customers first.

“My product is content,” she said. “I want to keep things accessible for the consumer and pamper them. Mommy bloggers are paid attention to, and we’re the same group. We’re just not moms.”

Down the line, pregnantish will move into product services and subscriptions, but serving the community with rich content is the ultimate goal.

Regarding finances, Syrtash’s next step is to do a seed round.

“I’ve gone far on not a lot of money,” she shared. “We’ve sold out every live event we’ve done. We’ve done six so far. We have over 26 professional journalists, who have written dozens of articles. So we’re out there. I just need to build my team.”

Build a community where people feel free to be vulnerable.

“Many events about infertility are low in attendance because people don’t like talking about this issue,” said Syrtash. “It’s very vulnerable to go to an infertility event. So part of my goal has been to take all the events out of clinics to make them lifestyle events. We always have a media moderator and cool programs happening. So it’s not clinical.As a relationship author I always say, ‘I’m credible, not clinical.’ For our events, we partner with clinics and always have a clinical expert on our panels, but people come because of the community we’re building.”

Syrtash has first-hand experience with the power of being vulnerable.

Pregnantish went live at the end of January 2017, but that wasn’t the intended launch date. When Syrtash published a deeply personal Facebook post about her infertility issues and the idea behind pregnantish, it was shared so many times that media started calling her. After that,Bravo, ABC News and the Toronto Star featured her, which led to an early launch for pregnantish.

If you want to be first to market, launch fast.

"We worked with someone at Google to determine that there was no other non-medical content site exclusively dedicated to infertility," said Syrtash. "There were blogs; but no other media company we could find. After this, my first investors said we need to launch fast. The reality is whatever you do, even if you think it’s perfect and you’ve workshopped forever, it’s going to change as you listen to the market, so you may as well launch to get that feedback. I didn’t worry about being perfect. I really felt like I needed to be first-to-market because of my experience as a patient, writer, producer and relationship expert.”

If you know you’re the right person to launch something, there’s no need to obsess over making it perfect. It will change and grow in real-time just like you.

Pregnantish is having its next live event in Los Angeles, CA on December 10th.

I’m an entrepreneur, speaker and compulsive traveler, focused on technology, media, and global entrepreneurship as drivers of equality. As the cofounder of Resolve, an accelerator and platform growing the impact investing ecosystem, I advise startups on balancing the tripl...